


Such Things Fade as With the Rest

by Kasuchi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-12
Updated: 2007-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every second is of infinite value.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Things Fade as With the Rest

**Author's Note:**

> For **shina_laris** , who requested this.

She baffles him. Every time, without fail. Just when he thinks he might have her figured out, she pulls something out that makes him feel like he's been two steps forward and ten steps back. It's a strange dance between them, and he'd find it annoying if it wasn't her, all bronze skin and dark hair and white, white teeth.

He likes the way their hands look when they're clasped.

See, see? This is how she baffles him. He wasn't always so softhearted, such a sappy romantic at heart. He blames her, but then he wonders if perhaps it's really all for the best. Because she smiles so very widely when he brings her yellow carnations, and she laughs so sweetly when he kisses her _there_.

Maybe she doesn't baffle him as much as he thinks.

**2.**

She hates how people always seem to think in pairs. It's always Harry and Ron, Harry and Hermione. It's never Harry and Ron and Hermione, and sometimes she laments that. She wonders why people don't realize that three is stronger than two, that three means stability and structure, and that two is just a base, a side. Two is incomplete, but three is a whole.

But, she has to note, we have two hands. ( _Ron moves his hands under her blouse, between her ribs and over her stomach and she squirms under his touch._ ) We have two eyes. ( _His blue eyes trace the outlines of her hand and she flexes her fingers self-consciously, all too aware of the inkstains and papercuts._ ) We have two lips. ( _She feels his lips brush over her collarbone and she can't suppress the sigh that escapes her._ ) We have two legs. ( _Their legs tangle and tangle and tangle together until she's not sure if they have edges and perimeters anymore._ )

She looks at the pair of their hands twined together and smiles. Ron and Hermione. She doesn't mind that so much.

**3.**

People always ask them if it was love at first sight with them. You're so close, they always say. Surely you must have known the minute you met.

They always meet eyes and smile a bit fondly.

"We hated each other," he says, squeezing her hand gently.

"Couldn't stand the sight of each other," she adds, pressing her fingers into his palm in reply.

"If it wasn't for Harry, I don't know how we'd have been friends at all."

"Quiet, you," Harry will break in sometimes, stepping in from the kitchen, drying his hands. "Don't listen to them, they're absolute nutters. It was _definitely_ love at first sight."

Those who asked always sigh and titter about how romantic that is, but the three of them know that both stories are right.

**4.**

He takes her for a brook ride above the clouds hanging over his home, higher than she's used to flying. Her hands clutch at the slim handle of the broom with a white-knucled grip even as she shrieks with laughter.

"Isn't it brilliant?" She hears him shout, the wind carrying his voice away from her. "I love it up here."

She takes stock of his long arm wrapped around her waist, the other covering one of her desperately clutching fingers. She smiles a little and leans into him, feeling the arm tighten protectively around her.

She thinks she could love it here, too.

**5.**

She challenges him to a game of chess every now and again. He'll tease her about wanting to get beaten once more, then pull out his worn set of chess pieces. She'll crack out the set she got for christmas a few years ago and they'll play a round. It's one of the few times they're absolutely silent; she, because she wants to know what'll happen if she wins, just this once, and him because he plays best when his entire focus is on the board.

Well, maybe not the board. She makes the best faces when she concentrates. A combination of her angry face and her stern face, mouth in a line and brows furrowed, but the light in her eyes is different.

She loves how relaxed he looks during chess. Not like Quidditch; here, he is confident and all his shields fall for a long moment, leaving him unabashedly him.

Harry wanders by about halfway through the game and watches for a few rounds before going to bed himself. their game drags on even as the room around them empties and the fire grows low with the hours.

He captures her rook with his King and suddenly they're left at a standstill, kinds two spaces apart and one space over, nothing more either of them can possibly do.

"I guess it's a draw." He looks as bewildered as he sounds, but there's an undercurrent of something warmer there, in the echoes of his voice.

"I guess so." She smiles at him soft from across the board, the firelight winking in the corners of her vision from behind Ron.

There's a quiet clatter and suddenly he's kissing her, long frame stretched out over and across the board braced by one hand. The other is easily pushing back a lock of her hair behind an ear, running ghostly fingertips along her jaw even as he kisses her, hard and demanding. Her hands fist in his jumper, and when they finally break apart they're clenched around the knit of the cable. She watches his lips mouth her name with half-lidded eyes before kissing him this time, tongue sweeping across his bottom lip and feeling his shiver under her hands.

Checkmate.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] "...such things fade as with the rest." = _Any Wife to Any Husband_ by Robert Browning.
> 
> [2] "Every second is of infinite value." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


End file.
